What Does Your Employer Do For You?

The Rickshaw Travels, Ltd.

So what is the big deal? Well, I will tell you the big deal.

Rickshaw is the guide transportation service that transports us to and from the airport and gets us to the places we need to go.

Mr. Deepak is the regional manager. He is originally from India. We met him when we stopped by the office with our driver, Martin, to settle up and go over our plans. Mr. Deepak offered to make contact with the businesses we would be visiting so as to alert them of our arrival. As long as we were there, we thought we would interview him, take some photos, and learn a little bit more about the company responsible for our lives. Hint: If you have ever been to Mexico and ridden in a taxi, you know what I mean.

Here is what we learned:

Fact #1: Rickshaw was formerly located in the center of Arusha in close proximity to reasonably priced restaurants for its employees.

Fact # 2: Rickshaw relocated its business to the outskirts of town.

Fact #3: The nearest restaurants for its employees to eat were in the hotels, which were far from cheap.

Fact # 4: Mr. Deepak decided it would be a good idea to plant a large fruit and vegetable garden on the new Rickshaw grounds so his employees could have affordable (60 cents a day) organic food to eat during the day, instead of going to the hotels or home for meals. One of the employees is cooking the fresh organic food for the whole crew.

Fact #5:   At the modest rate of 60 cents per day, per working employee, the garden is turning a profit, which will then be used to do more things for its employees. Mr. Deepak thought it would be nice to maybe buy a ping pong table for employee recreation during break time.

Fact # 6: Resourceful businesses can do really creative, innovative things to help their employees, which is a sure way to help improve business. Yeah, Rickshaw!

If every human on this planet thought of one little thing to make the world a better place, just image the world that we would live in.

Best Egg Goes to Gram

My Grandma Zella was the best grandma a person could ever hope for. She passed away a few days ago. I left for Africa July 18^th knowing that I had very likely said my last good-bye the night before. I got word on July 21^st in Babati that her journey had ended. She had been admitted to the hospital from the rest home on July 16th, and it was decided that no life support measures would be given. She had lived a good long life, and it was simply time. Her mind and body were both worn out. She had dementia and was nothing but skin and bones.

Enough of the sad. Here is the happy.

My grandma was very special to me, and she made me feel tremendously special to her. I loved her with all my heart, and I was incredibly lucky to have spent 50 years with her. She was one of the most caring people I know and did a lot for the people around her.

As a result of the dementia, Gram would sometimes say the craziest things. She never lost her sense of humor through the confusion. Whenever she would talk about someone that she cared about, she would always say, “He/she was a good egg.” That was something you could count on.    

Well, today I announce to the world that my Gram wins the award for Best Egg Ever. I miss you, Gram.

Thanks A Lot, Al Gore

What would the world be like if Al hadn't invented the Internet? Remember when he claimed that he had? It was a strange claim, but who am I to say he did or did not? Imagine no UPS packages from Amazon, no Wikipedia, no Facebook; hard to imagine.

I have been in Africa for all of three days. I have spent more time worrying about getting an Internet connection than worrying about my restricted rice diet for the next 30 days. What a sad admission. My computer says I am connected when I right click on that little icon on the bottom right corner of my computer, but saying you have it and actually getting to Facebook and your email would be two very different things.

Our last trip to Babati was 10 days. We never were able to connect. That seemed okay at the time for that length of time. This trip will be for 35 days, and I don't think I can survive without it.

The Kibo Palace Hotel had free WI-FI, but it was a little hit and miss. It worked well enough every 159 minutes, so I guess I should stop complaining. Chris always wonders why I seem to be mad at him when I can't get the dang thing to work. The reason is simple; he is the only one there. I certainly couldn't get mad at Emanuel, the bartender, or Lawrence, our food server, could I? Sorry, Chris, you're it.

For the next 30 days, I will try to be a litte more patient, and I will try to do a better job of understanding how the dang thing works. I will soon be transformed into Babati Penny; and trust me, that is a good thing.

I am in the internet cafe in Babati and the P and L don't work very well on my computer. Sorry for the misspellings, but time is limited. It might be more entertaining without a P or L.

Babati Bound

Today we are on our way to Babati; so much preparation; so little preparedness.

I have been absent from Stella’s Guide to Living far too long. Blogging has turned into something that I really enjoy. I feel obligated to write something on a regular basis. I am afraid if much more time passes without a post, my five followers will go find someone else to guide their living. 

These past few weeks, I have been consumed with work, laundry, planning, list making, figuring out how to change my message on my work phone, and arranging for people to mow, water and get the mail.

As I try to imagine what it will be like to be away from home for 5 weeks, I start to panic. I am excited to go and be gone, but I am also a little worried. I have no idea what is in my what-turned-out-to-be 48 pound bag. Actually, that is not true; I packed the bag, so I do have an idea of what is in it. I just don’t know if what is in it is what I will need. Too bad I couldn’t have crammed 2 more pounds of stuff in there. The big container of wipes and the bag of wheat thins were left behind for fear our home scale was off. It turns out that our scale weighed the same as the airport scale. Oh, well, I probably don’t need any wheat thins. I probably could have used the wipes for my hands, though. Hopefully, I won’t be sorry. If I am airlifted out of the country with some horrific intestinal difficulty, I will probably be sorry.

Chris and I had breakfast at Axel’s Bonfire in the Minneapolis Airport. Great choice.  I had a breakfast quesadilla served by the lovely DeeDee. She was a nice smiling face. Our morning started at 3:30, so our faces weren’t as smiley as hers. Our moods, though, are picking up. 

There is a lot of talk about the turkey sandwiches on the Delta flights. Maybe they should pass through the metal detector before being loaded on the plane.

I am very hopeful that there will be an internet café in Babati. You will be the first to know. It is three hours until we board the plane for Amsterdam.

Bon Voyage. 

“Writing and travel broaden your ass if not your mind, and I like to write standing up.” – Ernest Hemmingway

Put It Back On The Shelf

Have you heard about Skinnygirl Cocktails? Skinnygirl Wine? Skinnygirl Vodka? Supposedly, it is a new line of drinks for the health conscious 30-39 year old woman worried about her weight. I must say, I am not 30-39 but I was interested in finding out about this new invention. The vodka and ready-made cocktails are in my liquor store, but not the wine. They are working really hard at getting the wine in as fast as possible. It is the latest craze. As with any craze, you don't want to be late to the party. The craze could very well be over before you know it.

Skinnygirl cocktails were created by Bethenny Frankel. Helpful Bethenny was having a margarita one day and was appalled at the high number of calories it supposedly had. She became determined to make the world a better place by creating and selling her own lower calorie alcoholic beverages, says some blogger I found on the Internet.

So what is so great about the wine? I am not too interested in the greatness of the vodka or ready-made cocktails, as I am not too interested in drinking them, no matter how many calories they may have. The wine, though, has piqued my curiosity. Off to do a little Internet research

Fact #1: A 5 oz. glass of Skinnygirl white wine has 100 calories.

Fact #2: Your typical glass of white wine with the equivalent alcohol content has about 100 calories.

Fact #3: Skinnygirl wine contains something called E211, an additive linked to aging and cancer. 


Fact #4: Skinnygirl wine costs about $15 a bottle. Maybe they charge extra for the cancer causing additive.


Here is my free advice to you:  Forget the Skinnygirl wine. It is nothing more than a gimmick, invented by, of all people, Bethenny, one of the real housewives of New York City, preying on 30-39 year old women who like to get together for a glass of wine but also want to stay (or get) skinny. 


As a real housewife from Montana, I suggest that you get some exercise, continue to drink the wine you normally drink, but cut out bread and cookies. There.   


"Be moderate in everything, including moderation." ~ Horace Porter


(In case you don't know Horace, he was an American soldier and diplomat who served as a lieutenant colonel, ordnance officer and staff officer in the Union Army during the American Civil War. I had no idea who he was.)  

Where Is The Fun in Fundraising?

$$$$$$$

Good news: We are done fundraising. IndieGoGo officially closes today. We raised some money to put into the project and feel like we have contributed in some small way. We gave it our best. Time to pack and fill the malaria pill prescription.

All the way back to when I was a Brownie (the little Girl Scout, maybe age 8), there has been a requirement to go out and raise money. We had to sell cookies. Girl Scout cookies really sell themselves, but you still have to go door to door and beg people to buy them. Elementary students today have to sell wrapping paper, candy and a bunch of junk that does nothing but clutter someone's house. Arsenal soccer was all about selling cookie dough. High school sports was all about selling Bruin and Bengal cards, which was nothing more than a $10 donation, as there was nothing on the card worth using. Fundraising is a way of life if you are involved in any activity.

Fundraising, though, can be fun. If your approach is this is absolutely dreadful, it will not be much fun. If your approach is let's get in there, get the job done, there is fun to be had along the way.

The fun for Chris and me, we met some really great people we never would have met. We were out and about in the community every opportunity we had. We saw old friends around town that we hadn't seen in years. That was really quite fun. 


It is pretty hard to fundraise without the support of local businesses. They get hit up all of the time, but somehow they manage to keep on giving. In return, please support these businesses when you can. They are all really great people and care about what is going on in the community, as well as the world.

Staggering Ox
Brewhouse
Blackfoot Brewery
Lewis & Clark Brewery
Luxury Nails
Sole Sisters
Starbucks
Bear's Den
Sandy Mac's
M-T Glass Liquor
George's Distributing
Mountain Country Distributing
Cinemark
Lucca's

And these are our great friends that donated items and helped us out:

Wanda White
Jim and Sherry Tolan
Keith Clevenger
Nicole Woody
Amber Hartman
Kitty Brown
Kristi and Gordie McManus
Haylee

Another great piece of fun for me was the fact that my sister was the successful bidder (actually, the only bidder, and she kept bidding herself up) for the House Wine bike in our silent auction. We now have matching bikes. That would never have happened had we not been fundraising. We had matching bikes when we were young. I don't remember the style name, but they had a flowered banana seat and a basket. It was a trip down memory lane when we rode around the block on our new House Wine matching bikes. What a great thing to happen the year you turn 50.

The best news of all: I am putting the fundraising topic to bed for good. No more bracelets, auctions, donations. My sincerest apology for putting you through that. Back to food, fun and wine. Cheers.

"As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them." ~ John F. Kennedy